Developer: Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Platforms: PC, Mac
Tested on: PC (Steam)
Deponia Doomsday- Review
Although the Deponia series was thought to have come to an end when the third installment of the trilogy released, Daedelic Entertainment carefully crafted another sequel namely Deponia Doomsday. The adventurous point ‘n click game and its hilarious protagonist Rufus had already stolen many hearts but we’re positive he will steal many more with this new plot twister that is Deponia Doomsday.
Story
The Deponia trilogy came to a rather abrupt end but all seemed to fall into pieces quite well. Our favorite protagonist Rufus has saved Deponia by literally falling before Goal. But before we go any further, let’s dig into the origins of Deponia explained by none else than Goal herself.
“We crafted spears against beasts. Built walls against spears, ladders against walls and towers against ladders. After that we built boats, ramparts, chimneys, shaving foam, pie, catapults and when all our trash threatened to swallow even our highest spires, we built a spaceship. Powered by nothing less than the destruction of our own planet.”
As a trash-littered planet, people lived in terrible conditions but made the best out of the situation nonetheless. Elysium was high up the sky, completely unreachable and unaware of the happenings on the planet below. Until Rufus saved the day after a series of tragic events causing the poor Goal to land on the junkyard. Unfortunately, having the day saved by Rufus also means destruction as he is not the great engineer he believes he is. With the help of a temporal scientist who discovered strange time-anomalies on Deponia, Rufus decides to save Deponia for real this time with the help of a time traveling machine.
Deponia Doomsday offers clever plot twists that make you doubt whether or not the previous games have really happened while still offering tons of references to the trilogy. This is a neat feature considering the fact that the game takes place before, during and after events from the trilogy.
Graphics
The new installment continues to feature unique hand-drawn cel-shaded characters and backgrounds in a neat cartoon comic style with thick outlines. While the visuals in Deponia Doomsday are unchanged, the charm it offers is not lost on us. It is something that is typical for the Deponia series much like the silly humor found in items in the backgrounds. There are several games in the same genre that offer the same comic-styled visuals, such as Randal’s Monday, but Deponia Doomsday is more fine-tuned and some details truly stand out.
Sound
Deponia Doomsday follows up the trilogy rather perfectly in terms of narrative and visuals but the sound design must not be forgotten. The voice-overs continue to be simple but effective, although they still do align perfectly with the animations.
Something that will stick with you, in any of the Deponia games, is the intermezzo after each chapter. However this intermezzo is lost in translation in the new game and only one huzzah can be found throughout the entire game. Nonetheless, even without the thousands huzzah’s missing, the audio design is fairly solid still.
Gameplay
The Deponia series is a traditional point ‘n click game where you must gather items that can be combined with other objects in order to create something that might actually have a meaning for our engineering protagonist Rufus. In other words, Deponia Doomsday is one giant puzzle that offers a good amount of laughs, although less than before.
Certain mini-games will still require trial and error to complete but they seem to have lost their hardness compared to the previous three games. The logic has remained the same however and you’ll feel great once you’ve completed them. If these mini-games are not for you, you can always skip them but that will cost you some achievement points.
So overall the gameplay hasn’t changed but why try to fix something that was never broken in the first place? The game still gives you a run for your money as there will be plenty of back and forth’s but the first chapter is absolute king in being repetitive due to its time-traveling narration. Luckily you can skip conversations much like the previous games by simply clicking on the mouse. The rest of the storyline feels less repetitive although if you’ve played the previous games, you might notice plenty of reference to them and that might be a tad annoying. For those that have not yet dived into the world of Deponia, the game explains the previous events rather well.
What is new is the presence of a few quick-time events that require the player to repeatedly click as fast as possible. These sequences happen rather early in the game and remind me a bit of Telltale’s fast-reaction events although these are not as deadly in Deponia Doomsday.
Something that continues to be terribly annoying is the fact that the game does not offer automated saves. Instead the player is required to save their game themselves at critical times which can be a tad confusing for new players, especially since it’s difficult to know when exactly that might be. Other than that, the game is fairly replayable although the ending will never change for the better.
Conclusion
Deponia Doomsday is a great sequel to the trilogy that ended abruptly. The humor and mini-games have been downsized and new features such as quick-time events have been added but these don’t break the charm the game has going for it. When it comes down to the general design of the game – visually, audio-wise and logical cleverness – Deponia Doomsday is a worthy successor and the series continues to be one of the greatest adventurous point ‘n click games on the market.
Deponia Doomsday- Review,
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